Oppositional Behavior

Brighton | Plymouth

Fully Licensed Psychologists

Proven Treatments

125 Years of combined experience

Oppositional Behavior

Oppositional defiant behavior is common during the teen years. However, some teens take it to a whole other level, challenging your authority and breaking rules. Every day seems to be a constant struggle and you may feel like you are constantly in battle mode trying to stick to your rules that you know will help your teen stay on the right path. Your teenager seems to set the tone of the entire family, siblings become frustrated or, worse yet, copy their problematic behavior. Fights emerge more often between you and your partner when each of you are trying different approaches to get control of your teen’s behavior and gain respect, none of which seem to be effective. You may feel isolated and alone when you see other well-behaved teens who seem to be on the right path towards becoming a successful adult. You, yourself, never imagined that you would be the type of parent who ignores some of the bad behavior or words that come out of your teen’s mouth to avoid yet another battle.

We specialize in teens who are pushing the limits and we love them! They are the ones who will be the CEO’s and running the companies some day if we can channel all that strong-willed defiance in the right direction. We will help you learn parenting strategies specific to getting your teen to be more cooperative and listen more. If your teen is willing to participate, we will try to understand what is causing your teen to rebel so strongly and help your teen to see the long term consequences of their actions. Teens tend to list to everyone except their parents. Since we are not in the parental role, we can help them to gain insight into their life and the results of their decisions they are making today. Do not worry if your teen is resistant to coming in to see us. We will meet with you as their parent(s) and help you to know what to do next. Our empirically supported treatment approaches for working with oppositional and defiant teenagers have allowed us to see the results of our interventions, as many of our once difficult teens are now highly successful adults who have come back to thank us for understanding, guiding and believing in them.